Another question about engine plates ,

Can you run a engine plate in a street car.
also would arp 12 point stainless steel fasterners be upto the job

Yes ,a plate will work fine in a street car, and the arp bolts will work.

Thank you 56Tbird.

Some guys here use bushed ends where the plate mounts the chassis in streeters as opposed to solid .

Ok Thanks for the reply Gregaust
If you rubber mount the plate , wouldn't that defeat the purpose of it.

I believe the main intent of motor plates, are to allow the placement of the engine in any position you see fit.

I agreee with you to mount a engine,also handy for engine conversions,
the main reasons I want to use a plate is to gain some clearance ,with right hand drive I suffer from headers,starter and steering issues.
and I want to tighten up the chassis

darren wrote:Ok Thanks for the reply Gregaust
If you rubber mount the plate , wouldn't that defeat the purpose of it.

One of the purposes of using a front mounted motor plate is that there will be no mounts on the side and therefore more room to use whatever header combination you wish to run.

rmcomprandy wrote:

darren wrote:Ok Thanks for the reply Gregaust
If you rubber mount the plate , wouldn't that defeat the purpose of it.

One of the purposes of using a front mounted motor plate is that there will be no mounts on the side and therefore more room to use whatever header combination you wish to run.

X2,plus it's great too hang ACC's. on

BBF-falcon ,I like what you are saying

Next car I build is getting a rear plate hanging off of a cross tube running right above the transmission bellhousing. 15 or 20 years ago I saw some Nascar guys using this arrangement and have seen a few Detroit built drag cars with this setup.

Sounds good.
what car do you have now.

XEngr wrote:Next car I build is getting a rear plate hanging off of a cross tube running right above the transmission bellhousing. 15 or 20 years ago I saw some Nascar guys using this arrangement and have seen a few Detroit built drag cars with this setup.

Blake has this on his car.

jbozzelle wrote:

XEngr wrote:Next car I build is getting a rear plate hanging off of a cross tube running right above the transmission bellhousing. 15 or 20 years ago I saw some Nascar guys using this arrangement and have seen a few Detroit built drag cars with this setup.

Blake has this on his car.

I believe Fabio the HeRo has the same setup on his car too. There may be some photos on here somewhere or maybe it's on the old forum. I've considered doing that myself to open up some room, it gets damn tight down there.

I have a front motorplate and a midplate, the midplate is attached to both frame rails as well as a bar running across the back of the firewall that has spacers that go through the firewall and attach to the top of the midplate also. I don not run a tranny mount, rather the lateral engine limiters attach where the trans mount would be and run back to the driveshaft loop.

Jon, do you have any pics of the plates and mounts ?

This is on the smallblock car but same set up

Thats pretty slick... But given where your exhaust exits now would you have just gone with the crossmember now?

This is what I thought about doing and just eliminate the mounts on the frame rails. Green bar is my current dash bash, red are the added drops, the blue tubes would pierce the firewall and I can use my current mid plate with some mods.

I wanted to do that to mine but I didn't have to time....

138 wrote:Thats pretty slick... But given where your exhaust exits now would you have just gone with the crossmember now?

no.

I feel the midplate needs to connect at the framerails also, it just ties everything together.

On a BBF fox I'd take the collectors out the front fender, this is the industry std now.

richter69 wrote:

138 wrote:Thats pretty slick... But given where your exhaust exits now would you have just gone with the crossmember now?

no.

I feel the midplate needs to connect at the framerails also, it just ties everything together.

On a BBF fox I'd take the collectors out the front fender, this is the industry std now.

is there a horse power advantage to bringing the collecters out the fenders?

I was talking about the bars on your trans...

In my opinion if someone was going to use any one of the many different "mid plate tree" style tubing mounts/designs it's best to have the "tree" actually connect to both the dash bar and the main frame rails. This way you have mid plate mounting bolts at both the lower frame rail area and up around the dash bar area. Just mounting the mid plate only to the dash bar can result in the dash bar (and also windshield bars) flexing/moving around. The goal isn't to replace the lower fame mid plate mounts with upper dash bar mid plate mounts for more header room. The idea is to use both upper & lower mounting points to better anchor the mid plate to the chassis and the cage at the same time.


Having the headers exiting out the side of the front fender vs under the car has a few pros/cons.........

Pros.....

1 Can reduce the noise inside the car, especially on a car with a full chassis and/or an aluminum floor.

2 Can reduce the amount of cracks showing up in the floor/firewall area over time from exhaust vibration.

3 Can reduce the amount of exhaust gases building up under the car (and getting into the driver compartment), especially on a full chassis car.

4 Looks really cool on a big/multiple stage nitrous car with the long blue flames coming out the sides of the car.

Cons......

1 Increased chance of fiberglass fender damage around the exit hole cut for the collector from exhaust vibration. Using a stainless steel/aluminum/carbon fiber trim ring around the hole can help reduce the damage.

2 Makes it a little harder to remove a fiberglass lift-off nose from the car. How much harder depends on how far the collector hangs out the fender hole, and the exit hole placement on the fender it's self. If the exit hole sits way back at the fender/door jam area and is an open-ended "slot" instead of a round "hole" it's a piece of cake. If it's a round hole somewhere in the middle of the fender it makes it a little harder.

I did the headers on the outside of the frame rails mainly so i didnt have to pull one side off to get the damn tranny out...............not that its been out, I had to make new ones anyway so it was a no brainer,


The tires will run the tubes though at full lock.